I'm writing this one-handed. I've just gnawed my arm off trying to survive the soul-destroying tedium of ETC's training videos for the Ion lighting console. Don't know what I'm on about? Look here to see what this is all about. Or there are links to let you spend a couple of hundred quid buying these videos on DVD. Think "both arms" and some teeth drilling. So why this web-page? Well, it occurred that for people who've met lighting desks, most of the useful content could be condensed into a few sentences. Along the way I'll be keeping track of how many hours of your life you've clawed back.
Yes, this page is written for Strand users. We're all quite happy with the 500 series; it's the pinnacle of conventional lighting control - sensibly orthogonal command syntax, plethora of shortcuts, mainly it's just quick. Ok, so we get embarrassed when someone says "But how do you get support?", not that we've ever needed it. And we've all got familiar with refrence groups, and can never afford enough wobbly toys for the moving light aspects of Strand to slow us down. But there comes a day when we're forced to learn something else. Ion is ETC's mid-range desk; Element doesn't do much at all, and Eos is its big brother. But I'm stuck with an Ion.
Chapter 1 - don't bother. You'll learn the presenter has an American accent, but otherwise you've saved 53 seconds of your life. Apparently it's all about "Maximum ease of use".
Channel. As a seasoned Strand user you know that a channel can control both intensity and a multitude of attributes; ETC call these "parameters".
"Some desks are Preset (like Expression), some are tracking (like Obsession)" WHAT? We're Strand users; our desk can do both. Apparently the Ion is "kinda like both" - but no more detail.
It's a command line desk so don't be scared, but they've brought lots of direct access command in from Expression. Mmm? Stop coughing at the back - I've just saved another 2:23 of your life.
Guess what? 5-pin DMX goes in the DMX hole. Ditto Ethernet, RJ45 hole. There's not enough embarassment around the choice of a dual DVI connector (needs an adapter) - apparently you get two individual DVI connectors on more recent desks. Ignore the PS/2 mouse/keyboard, plug in USB mouse/keyboard, and any fader wings (more embarassment - needs a separate wall wart PSU). Plug in the main IEC and switch the switch on the back; there's a separate power button on the front that turns the desk on. There you go - three and a half minutes of your life back.
Save 4 mins of your life. There's a picture of the front panel here. It's cramped but as you'd expect (grandmaster, single playback, numeric keypad surrounded by various poorly grouped buttons, wheel etc). Soft keys are S1-S6 and they're context sensitive (yawn) and there's a more softkeys button. Moving light encoders at the top and they're buttons. Right hand keypad above the wheel control is display-related
Faders can be things other than submasters. The rest of the 90 seconds is all about how many faders you can plug in.
You can have one or two displays. Typically left is channels and command line, right has playback cue sheet, fader status, and the CIA. The what? No matter how many times they say "Central Information Area" you will keep thinking American Policemen. It's a sort of dumping ground for things that don't fit elsewhere in the user interface; you can hide/reveal it with the big arrowy thing (Hmmm? We need a mouse now?). SWAP key swaps displays, or if you can only afford a single monitor, cycles through various display formats. 3 minutes of your life back.
Channel "tiles" for plain intensity channels. But a table view shows you attributes, sorry, "multi-parameter" lights. FORMAT key toggles entirely tiles vs tables. Format + Wheel controls zoom and most things do this. Multi-parameter things in tile view are squiggly, and gain FCB letters for Focus, Colour, Beam etc. Note quite tracker preset, but it's a start. Yep, that's another 4:32.
FLEXI key toggles the display between "Patched Channels", "Show Channels" (all recorded in cues/subs etc), "Active channels" (above zero intensity), "Selected channels" (Ronseal), the default of everything. It shows the mode under the clock top right. As a Strand user you're naturally wondering how you configure the display groups - don't wait up. Yawn, 2:38
Command line shows up on the CIA, the channel screen and the LCD. "The nice thing about the command line is you are able to go back and make changes before you execute." What? Foaming at the mouth Strand users smell a rat here. Yes, for as long as there have been lighting desks, there has been the Strand way of doing things "selection VERB-it!" and the ETC way "Action selection yes-I've-finished-now-so-I'll-press-enter". So whereas ETC users have been doing [RECORD] what I wonder [CUE] oh yes which [1] really? yes [ENTER], we're already hit [CUE][1][RECORD] and are one keypress ahead. Or just [CUE][RECORD] since the desk ought to know the current cue. or indeed [RECORD], since cues are the most frequently recorded thing. To quote the famous man, ETC - LISTEN - WE'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG, NOW WHAT'S THE QUESTION! Don't look so hurt... what's that, they've all left the room and it's just the Strand users left? Still, we're among friends. I think this is a rant we'll return to, but at least I didn't spend two and a half minutes breaking the news to you.
UNDO undoes the last command.
Or "Cue list". Each row is a cue; not all fields are present if unused. Time columns for intensity fade (may split up/down) , plus focus, colour, beam attribute (sorry parameter) times. Duration is the total cue time across all the preceeding guff. There are flags for (M)ark, (B)lock, (A)ssert, (P)reheat, (A)ll-(F)ade. Hush now, auto-preheat auto-move-while-dark users. "Attributes" (stop coughing - I'll translate) FW/HG (follow/hang you'd call "WAIT") Link and Loop we have to assume do the same thing, Curve is what you'd call a profile, Rate is percentage change to cue rate, Label you'd call text. External links are other things run by the cue e.g. macros. Nearly four minutes.
ALIENS! (Stop it!) "What is the CIA? Soft keys on steroids". See earlier definition, and save a minute.
A specific area of the CIA (no, not area 51). DISPLAYS key brings up the browser if you've lost it. Also on the same keypad are up, down, left, right to navigate the browser. Select is like clicking. They don't mention it but there's an escape key here (same as ESC on keyboard), and it's good for making things go away. So, File, Print-to-PDF, setup, list-of-stuff live here. Virtual controls allows you to put bits of the desk on the screen (so you can pretend you bought an EOS) - actually useful in the offline editor. Two and a half minutes!
Survived the first 32:27 of stuff? Good oh. Here we enter the next main section "Control and Recording". Might be worth having the offline editor available; the setup screen lets you not run it full-screen. You'll get very lost trying to make the various desk control surfaces appear on screen and deleting tabs you accidentally created, and swear a lot at the browser. (Hint: Escape key) There is some rationale to it, but it's very non-obvious.
CIA > Browser > File > New. Apparently you want to select "1:1" patch before creating a new show; seems to be a mis-nomer - at least in the offline editor it created an empty patch. It will plague you with "Are you sure?"
ABOUT gives you information about whatever is selected, and by default about the Ion, number of channels etc.
HELP... "it's like having the user manual built into the desk" (!). I've tried the manual; that's a rant for another day. Hold help and press any other key (inc softkey) for help. Feeling the pace quicken? That's another 3 minutes gone.
1 [+] 3 [THRU] 8 [-] 4. As you'd expect. "Channel was assumed" since you didn't type anything first that numbers relate to channels. Eureka! We expect nothing less, but it'll still put a superflous "Chan" on the command line to make ETC users feel right at home (stop sniggering at the back).
Select Last. Fair enough, this is an improvement. It re-posts the last list of channels you used. If you press and hold "Select last" soft keys 1-3 are "Select Active" (any channel with non-zero intensity), "Select Manual" (any channel you've fiddled with) and "Select All" (really - all of the channels on the console). Press and hold is to remind you that you couldn't afford an EOS which has buttons for such things (no the main keypads aren't the same, so investing time in one desk doesn't transfer well to another). You'd hope that you could change your mind and press a different select option, but sadly, rather than replacing what you typed with what you wanted instead, the command line punishes you with lots of red text and whines at you and you have to press clear a lot.
Let's get all of the frustration over in one go. This is the ranty bit. Still, CHANS {wheel} works. But it's all downhill after that...
Channel 2 at 50 percent? [2][@][5] What that's not it [ifty-5] what it's not done it yet oh [ENTER]. You're just trying to annoy me now. Anyone know if I can turn double-digit entry off?
But wait... "The OUT key is great because it doesn't require the use of an [ENTER] button". WELL DONE ETC. What happened to the rest of the desk? Still, CHAN OUT is nice.
Consistent? Can we do CHAN [FULL]? No. CHAN OUT happens immediately. CHAN [@][FULL] needs [ENTER]. "Shortcuts?" (control yourself)... [@][@] brings a light on to full, [FULL][FULL] brings a light on to "Level". Why aren't those the other way around? Level is what us Strand users would call "ON", and no, I haven't found the group where you configure the "ON" level on a per-channel basis, but apparently it's a setup option.
{UP} and {DOWN} softkeys? There's a shortcut [@][+][+] or [@][-][-]. In my family this is known as a "Peter Mackintyre shortcut" - one that's actually longer but taken for a different reason. In this case, it's because you didn't buy an EOS.
Hit Select Last twice and you get your last command back and can edit it. Nice. And if you're reading this ETC, could we have a full command history? It'd be a nice touch.
So there you are - five minutes of screaming at the video crying "no no no, all I want to do is less typing".
CHAN [@][some-level] oh no, didn't press enter [MORE-SOFTKEYS] [CHAN-CHECK] brings the channel on, whereupon [NEXT] and [LAST] step through the channel list essentially to rig-check, exit with [CLEAR]. Didn't seem to work in the offline. But wait - FLASH A-ha, saviour of the universe. No, seriously, it identifies channels. So do we get a configurable active-when-pressed {BUMP} button with a choice of FLASH, SOLO, FLASH+SOLO?.... nope. CHAN [MORE SOFTKEYS]{FLASH} and it flashes on and off until you hit CLEAR. But only 2:18 of your life gone, so not too bad
Rolling on the floor "It's most similar to the release button on other ETC desks"... CHAN [SNEAK] [yawn-ENTER] fades a channel from whatever manual value you set to the level from the controlling CUE. A bit like Strand "Shift-CLR" clears updated values but it actually returns the level, and there's a default fade time. And because of the enter tedium you can do CHAN [@] level [SNEAK][yawn-ENTER]. Or to do Strand CHAN [TIME] time @ level, you do CHAN @ level - oh-yes-double-digit-level [SNEAK] [TIME-what-else-could-I-type] time [groan-ENTER]. And you've learn something in a whole 3 minutes flat.
For those of you rich enough to play with waggly lights you'll understand pages of encoder controls. Top-right buttons are Focus, Color-grr-American, Form, Image, Sutter, Custom categories. Repeated presses page the encoder wheels through various settings in each category. The encoders are also buttons and bring up special functions on the soft-keys (e.g. home, next and last for framed scrollers, min, max). Five minutes.
You'd think you'd get to this earlier than nineteen chapters in but here goes. Build your state in live, [RECORD] cue-number[ENTER]. Eureka! Cue is assumed but will pop up on the command line to patronise you and to make editing more faff later. [RECORD][SUB]number [ENTER] does what you'd expect, and you can assign the submaster to a fader (how?). Three and a half minutes! But you can have two decimal places on point cues.
Groups are ONLY for selecting channels; they contain no level information. The Ion remembers the order you specify channels in and tantilisingly this will become useful later (stay tuned!). CHANS [RECORD][GROUP]number[ENTER]. And before [ENTER] you can [LABEL] some-text. [GROUP][GROUP] brings up the group list, which is just a list of channels and not a full channel screen. Four minutes!
Still with me? You might have noticed we've saved an hour of our lives so far and still not played back a cue. Here goes...
GO and STOP/BACK do what they're supposed to, as does Goto cuecue-num[ENTER] in a default fade time. Goto-Cue zero resets to the top of the cue list and zeros intensities. Goto-Cue [OUT] is similar but takes all non-intensities to home. So how to be [LOAD] a cue? [CUE] number [LOAD] is what you'd hope for? [CUE] number [totally-unnecessary-ENTER] to select it and then LOAD is what's required. Apparently CUE num LOAD invites the command line to berate you for being a Strand user and expecting the desk to do the obvious. After all, this could mean all sorts of other things? However, selecting cues like this does at least enable other buttons to work with the selected cue (e.g. time). Didn't need to take five minutes did it?
"really really cool". Contemptible jargon. A whole two minutes to explain that you can run multiple cues at once on one playback. What else where you expecting it to do?
[CUE] number [TIME] time [ENTER]. Or [CuE] number [TIME] up-time [TIME] down-time. They don't mention it but repeated prodding of [TIME] appears to reveal focus, colour, beam times as well. Or you can set "MANUAL" times which you have to run on the playback faders after pressing go. One controls up-lights and one controls down-lights as you'd expect. Seven whole minutes.
Auto-mark. Three and a half minutes to explain auto-move-while-dark if you turn it on for your show, but you do get a nice "M" flag in the previous cue if the desk has spotted it needs to do this.
Submasters can be assigned to faders (but wait, we're not telling you how yet, that's in the setup video). Lo and behold, the lights are proportional to what recorded in the sub times the fader position. They're highest-takes precedence (unclear if us Strand users would call these NORMAL or INDEPENDENT). [RECORD] sub-bump-button is a nice shortcut, but I've no idea if the Strand [SUB] range load-a-whole-page-with-a-single-bump-button is possible. You can page subs - hold FADER CONTROL and the sub bump buttons select the page. All in five mins.
No really, I can't take the excitement. I'm off to bed...
©Eddy Langley - Page last updated 17 February 2011 by webmaster (at) lampie (dot) org